The iPhone 6S is the last of the great iPhones, everything else is trash

Apple's about to release a new iPhone. Huzzah! Except: You shouldn't buy it. Because the best iPhone already exists. It's the 6S. And you should score one instead of buying an iPhone X. Or even an 8.

Not just because early-adoption is a losing game played by people plagued by the false insecurity that they're some kind of Luddite because the guy next to them at the bar has the newer thing, but because they’ll also be voting against the tyrannical control Apple wants to exert over your life and your choices, like your ability to push actual, real buttons. Also, plenty of other evils of the universe that aren't fake buttons.

Just facts: There are already plenty of reasons to not buy this new iPhone even before it comes out. When removed from the mathy gibberish of "tech specs" meant to convince you that you're getting something you should've had in the first place—"processing power," a curved screen, whatever it's gonna be—objectively speaking, the 6S is just a better phone than the 8 or the X. And we'll get to that. But right now, you're here to learn about the Once and Future King of iPhones, the 6S.

And good god, the 6S is great. Magnificent, even. Why?

- It's fast.

- It's light.

- It's the perfect size. It's the Goldilocks of phone sizes: Not too big, not too small, just right.

- It represents the iterative peak of design innovations brought to the table by Apple—wherein each improvement from all that came before it wasn't just great, but meaningful—in its physical form and function.

- It has live photos. Live photos are cool, I guess.

- And the camera's pretty great. Honestly, if you think you need a better camera than the one on the 6S, I've got news for you: You're either the world's worst photographer, or you should just buy, you know, an actual camera.

And we haven't even gotten to the important stuff yet. Because the 6S represents the last of its kind: A phone that has everything you need, everything you might think you want, and nothing more.

For example:

- A headphone jack. Why they hell, you might ask yourself, would I want a phone with a headphone jack when everyone is making Bluetooth headphones now? Because options is why. Because Bluetooth headphones can short out. They can run out of batteries. If you're Alex Jones, they might be sending your brain soothing nanowave messages about late-stage capitalism when they're not giving you alien cancers from Uranus. Whatever they're doing, know this: Regular headphones don't do that. They also don't short out as easily or require charging. Regular headphones are everywhere. And regular headphones—or aux wires, which are easier to use and don't require the inane, cumbersome setup most Bluetooth devices force on you—Don't. Require. A. Dongle. Apple forced upon new adopters of its phone an accessorizing feature that earns them money despite the wide outcry against it, because Apple knows we are sheep that will buy their phones even though we hate how they are missing features we find to be important to us. That isn’t a low assessment of the general public—it’s practically contemptuous.

- An actual button. Know what's deeply satisfying and reassuring? Buttons. They're mechanical. They live in a three-dimensional plane. They give when you push them. They respond, with equal force—such as laws of physics demand of them—when depressed. They send a wonderfully satisfying signal to your brain of physical rapture, from your button-pressing thumb or finger or whatever you press buttons with (not judging, just saying, that's cool too). And that signals says: Something in this world responded as it should. Even if the button didn't do anything. And to be fair: Sometimes buttons, when pressed, don't do things! It happens. Such is life, and the crushing weight of your expectations for the most pithy responses from it. But would you rather have a button you press not do something, or a button you don't press do nothing? The "fake button" of the iPhone 7 is just insulting. That the iPhone X won't have any kind of physical button on its face—not even the cheesy simulacrum of one, such as the 7 has, and the 8 will have—is an affront to not just your humanity, but humanity at large, and honestly, probably the first of a thousand death by pinpricks in the forthcoming robot/human wars. Probably. The point is: buttons are great. Not having buttons sucks.

And, dear reader, some (obviously rhetorical) questions to consider:

- Outside of the misery-inducing "innovations" we've just considered, can you name the features the iPhone 7 has that make it substantially better than the 6S?

- If you own an iPhone 7, can you think of an innovation that you desperately want on an iPhone that Apple looks poised to deliver on?

- And if you owned a 6S, can you think of one thing you felt was missing from that phone when you owned it? [Semi-Rhetorical Answer:If your answer is "a fake button," your life is fake news. Die slow.]

- Finally, among the innovations we all want from Apple—like, say, replaceable iPhone batteries we could charge externally, or the reintroduction of a headphone jack, or an iPhone that is specifically designed with security features meant to keep Apple from just dropping late-era U2 on it without your consent—does Apple look poised to deliver on any of them?

And then there are the reasons why the iPhone 8 or the iPhone X will suck without ever needing to have it in your hand:

Among 'em:

- At $800/$1,000, both new iPhones are gonna cost you more than the, yes, yearly incomes of nearly everyone in sub-Saharan Africa.

- Which, hi, is also filled with conflict zones that may or may not be where Apple continues to score minerals used to make iPhones, thus perpetuating a cycle of human rights abuses and environmental destruction. Nice.

- If you're not into the ethics of capitalism, fine, you monster, but look: You could take $800-$1,000 and invest it into something that will actually make you money, like cryptocurrency. If you bought a single Bitcoin a year ago with that money, you'd be sitting pretty, as opposed to being a dummy sitting there with a new iPhone, which isn't cool. You know what's cool? More money. You know what's really cool? Yeah you do.

- Also, do you really want facial recognition technology in your phone? Cool. Here's some facial recognition: You look like a sucker.

- But whatever, if you need to know why facial recognition sucks, go watch Minority Report and Enemy of the State back to back, maybe but not necessarily on some kind of amphetamine or very strong sativa edibles—again, not necessarily, but it helps enhance the experience—and then commit a low-level crime (like going five minutes past the parking meter, or using your parents' HBO Go login) and then tell me how you feel about facial recognition. And if you still want it, you're cops.

Finally, and most importantly, once the iPhone 8 and iPhone X truly show their shiny, expensive faces to the world, given that the iPhone 7 (which was the ultimately betrayal of you, a reasonable, dongle-hating, button-pressing human) already exists, the 6S is gonna be an absolute bargain. You can sell your 7 to some other sucker to take over, you'll get a headphone jack back, you'll have a button, and maybe some money to start your own cryptocurrency with—ButTonCoin, maybe.

Yes, you can have it all. The world will be yours. And in fact, you may already have it. And you give all that up by buying an iPhone X. Or an 8. Or a 7.

Just stick with the 6S. It works, it's great, and it's got a headphone jack. And you're not stupid. You're welcome.

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